Thanks for the response.

Another question: instead of getting my follows from my Spotify, could it let me type the artists I'm interested in?

I really want to use it (I'm also not happy with Spotify's recommendations), but my follow list is mainly for podcasts. Maybe just letting the user enter the artist names (instead of getting them from Spotify follow lists) would be easier to support?

Not currently, no - I might potentially include it at some point, but I feel like the Spotify UI is better tailored for that, so I'm not sure.

The current functionality revolves around genres, and artists are derived from those selections. There are some additional filters where you can filter down based on album/track release dates, exclude genres or specific artists - but it all comes from your library, not from the whole Spotify pool. It was a deliberate decision, as my gripe was the fact that I have a massive library, and was not listening to its entirety.

You can achieve a somewhat similar functionality by creating a playlist, and adding a single song from any artists you want in that playlist.

As to the following list - the podcast/artists libraries are not the same and you can access them at different places in Spotify. If you click on your profile and go to following you'll only see artists/friends. Moreover they are behind separate APIs/access scopes and I only scrape the aritsts you follow.

If you want give it a go, you might find it useful. You can delete your account at any time - I don't keep any of your data once you delete your account.